Professional Blooming Secrets?

I sure would like to know what kind of fertilizer the professional landscapers use -the ones who plant & maintain the flower beds I see at all the Apartment complex entrances, or Mall entrances. They're always covered in flowers-the petunias for instance; mine always got leggy & just had flowers sporadically on them. What's their secret?? Is it the mysterious three numbers on the different fertilizers? I know they control whether the plants bloom flowers or promote the greenery aspect of them etc. Never did investigate all that complicated stuff but am ready to try if that's what it'll take to get such abundant color in my yard this year. thanks.

It could be as simple as pinching them more early in the season to make them fuller and then deadheading the blooms to keep them blooming, the fact that yours are leggy and flower sporadically make me suspect you're not doing that. I would guess they also use one of the bloom booster types of fertilizers that's high in phosphorus, but keep in mind that there can be too much of a good thing so make sure to apply according to the directions. And I'd still pinch and deadhead even if you try switching fertilizers.

thanks so much-I'll try your suggestions for sure.

The other thing to check is how much sun they're getting--sunloving plants will tend to get leggy and not bloom as well if they have too much shade. All the pinching, deadheading, and bloom booster in the world won't help much if they don't have as much sun as they need.

It's not really a "secret" how they get those beds so full and lush looking:

The co. I used to work for did it like this: We planted everything from 4" containers, planted them REALLY close together, (way closer than the reccommended spacing) and incorporated a high phosphorous fertilizer into the soil, beforehand.

Depending on the budget, we also would sometimes plant gallon sized plants...for a faster-to-fill-in look.

The drawback to this, however, is the plants sort of get "exhausted" quickly and tend to crowd each other out. But, then we would just rip them out and put new color in...and do the same thing all over again.

Most of those large beds of color only lasted a few months maximum doing it like that...but the property owners had big budgets for the "look" so they didn't care. We did it the same way when I worked at Disneyland. It's sort of "cheating" in a way...but for commercial property, many landscapers do it like that.

You can get the same effect in a home garden by spacing things further apart and being 'patient' for it to fill in...and it will usually last a lot longer...especially if you use a time released fertilizer.

Hey, I managed class a apartment complexes exactly like those for years and years and I can tell you they did absolutely nothing to the plants.
Every spring and fall we did the "color change" The landscaping company would come in an yank out whatever was there and put hundreds of 4 inch potted annuals, about 6 inches apart. They looked great for a few months and then get yanked out again.
It would cost us about 2k everytime we did it, sometimes more depending on the property and how much color we needed. I've never had a landscaper fertilize or pinch or pay ANY attention to them after they were planted. Unless some died and I made them replace them. We were lucky if we were able to get the mulch fluffed, because the owner's sure weren't going to spring for new mulch. That only happened every few years.

Go to your local store and buy organic potting or topsoil blend with one small bag of spaghem peat moss. If building a flower bed, mix all this with your soil. Then top dress it with - here it is the secret to growing all plant (mainly for rooting and blooming).. BONE MEAL. It's what all the big growers don't want you to know. Just set back and watch your flower beds or even garden grow, grow, grow. It's also great for seed or bulb starter. DO NOT ADD any fertilizer right yet. May burn plants. Just keep watered as you normally would and enjoy the experience, it's great. HAPPY GROWING AND GOOD LUCK.